


Truce in Time

by Flora_Obsidian



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Kinda Fluff Kinda Angst, but it always is with these two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 06:10:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16948485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flora_Obsidian/pseuds/Flora_Obsidian
Summary: The Doctor runs into someone she didn't expect to see again.





	Truce in Time

**Author's Note:**

> Aight, this one goes out to my housemate Emmett + his wonderful interpretation of Rory-as-the-Master, due to convoluted time shenanigans. 
> 
> Points of reference: Missy panic-regenerated at the end of S10 and shoved herself into a fob watch for her own protection, winding up as young Rory Williams. Rory stayed as Rory through the events of canon and eventually opened the fob watch after he and Amy had made their lives in New York. Also, he's trans, because Emmett says so.
> 
> Hope I got your character right, friend, and I hope you like the secret santa gift <3

“Why am I not surprised? It’s Christmas, something _always_ happens on Christmas.”

The Master closed his eyes for a moment. He didn’t recognize the voice – distinctly feminine, though with the Time Gentry that didn’t have to mean anything – but he recognized the _tone_. He certainly hoped he would, after however many thousands of years it had been. Hell, even trapped inside a fob watch, he had managed to find his way back to the Doctor.

“Is it _really_ so hard to believe that I’m not here to cause trouble?”

Admittedly, he _was_ sitting on the roof of Buckingham Palace, watching the snow fall and drinking champagne. And he had caused a bit of trouble a few decades back just for the fun of it. Toppled an empire on Sabraxian IV just to witness the chaos and fire of the aftermath. Bit of light embezzlement a couple quadrants over once the dust had settled. The usual. Understandably suspicious. But today – no, today he had just felt like something quiet, an all-too rare occurrence with the drums no longer there. The quiet could so often be frightening.

“I had to interrupt my lunch here to go and stop another spaceship from blowing this place up, and then I pick up artron energy on my scanners on the way back in, so forgive me if I’m feeling a little paranoid.” He heard footsteps, a muffled curse as the Doctor slipped a little on the wet surface, and then his former friend was standing next to him, expression curdling into a pale and horrified sort of shock. She stumbled backwards; the Master took another sip of champagne.

“Hello,” he said. “Your fashion sense is still terrible. Appropriate, but terrible.”

The Doctor – now blonde, with a long gray overcoat and a heavy rainbow scarf looped around her neck – shook her head and took another step back, fumbling in a pocket before pulling out the sonic screwdriver to aim it at him like it was one of the guns she claimed to hate.

“You have five seconds to tell me why you’re wearing _that_ face, before I get very, very cross with you.”

“Oh, like you’re not already cross? I can see it in your face. And speaking of faces, this one _is_ mine. It’s been mine for a while.” He put down his glass and looked up at her from where he was sat. “First clue: fob watches. Second clue: starts with _M_ and ends with _aster_. Third clue, because you can be stunningly oblivious--”

She took another lurching step back from him – and slipped a second time, throwing out her arms for balance. The Master shot to his feet in a heartsbeat and caught her by the arm, and for a moment the two of them simply stared at each other.

He was taller than her now. Significantly taller. That… hadn’t happened in a long time. Since they had been children…?

“Explain,” she said in a low tone, glaring at him with all the weight of millennia behind her gaze-- oh, but he had just as many years behind him, now. So much history. There always was. “How you got here, and how you got-- got Rory’s face.”

“Fob watch,” he repeated quietly. “I was Missy, and I regenerated, and-- panicked, perhaps. Just a little. Wound up as a little boy in a minuscule town, and you know all the rest.”

“When did _you_ come back, then? Cause that’s a long con, even for you--”

“I told you, I’m not here to cause trouble for once!” The Master let go of her wrist and stepped back, turning away, folding his arms across his chest. “It was after Manhattan. I was Rory Williams for an exceptionally long time. He was… remarkable, for a human.”

There was a long silence from the Doctor. He heard her footsteps – distinctly more cautious this time around – and she was standing a little bit closer to him.

“And now you’re here?”

“And now _you’re_ here.” He looked back down at her, just for the sake of being able to actually look down at her. Maybe he’d been the taller one with that whole fiasco in America…? But that had been a long time ago.

“Drinking champagne on the roof?”

“I live to be dramatic, Doctor.”

“Oh, yes, I’m _quite_ aware of that.” She was frowning a little bit-- thinking too loudly, too. Projecting. It was starting to give him a headache. “You left.”

“Are we _really_ going to do this now?”

“No better time for it.” She spread her hands out. “You left. After everything, you left with _him_ \--”

“--and then we shot each other in the back.”

Ah. That got her to pause. Even her thoughts went blank for a blissful moment.

“It was kind of funny, thinking back on it.” He tilted his head to one side, considering. Shame he could only remember it once. “Like I said. Dramatics.”

“…You really expect me to believe you’re just sitting here, drinking on a rooftop, because you felt like it?”

“I do most everything just because I feel like it. Would it help you if I said I was taking a breather after the latest mastermind plan?”

“Strangely enough, that does reassure me.”

The Doctor shifted back and forth, and then in a fluid motion, shoved her sonic back into her pocket, stepped around him, and sat down where he had been sitting before. She took his glass of champagne and drained it before pouring a little more from the bottle. The Master stared at her.

“…Pardon?”

“Doesn’t get boring, sitting on a rooftop by yourself? I’d get bored. This one gets bored easily.”

“All of you get bored easily.” The quip came on autopilot while the rest of his mind tried to process her motivations. “You looked like you were going to throw me off the roof a minute ago, and now you’re stealing my drinks.”

“You stole my ship. And my friends. And a lot of other things.” She patted the ground next to her. “…Listen. You’ve got the face of a friend I used to know. I don’t know how long it’s been since we’ve seen each other, linearly or cross-linearly or any of that sort. And frankly, I don’t know why you picked here of all places to show up, but I really should probably stop questioning it at this point. D’you remember 1972?”

“…Which time around?” seemed like the safest answer. He’d been to 1972 a number of times.

“Oh, ages and ages ago. I knew martial arts and didn’t have a TARDIS, and you had that beard and a cloak.”

It rang some distant bell in his memory, but there were so many years crammed in there-- but then again, he always remembered the Doctor.

“What about it?”

“Come off it, you, don’t act like you don’t remember. Christmas, UNIT, you planted a bunch of bombs that were laughably easy to get rid of?” She took another sip of – _his_ champagne. Rude. “I remember-- I forget a lot of things, but I remember this-- you couldn’t just ask to spend time with me. It’d ruin your image. So sit yourself back down and have a drink with me – that’s not you asking me, it’s the other way around.”

Against his better judgment, the Master sat, still staring at her, still confused-- the Doctor kept talking.

“I’m sure we’ll wind up on the opposite sides of a battlefield at some point.” Her voice turned solemn for a moment. “Always seem to. But for now-- just for once-- let’s ignore the past, eh? Have a drink with me.”

She held out the glass like a peace offering.

The Master, after looking at it for a moment that dragged out into several, took it.

**Author's Note:**

> Lowkey highkey inspired by the following short story:
> 
> http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/UNIT_Christmas_Parties:_Christmas_Truce_%28short_story%29


End file.
